Sachin Tendulkar - The opening act

Among all openers who scored 8000-plus ODI runs, Tendulkar's average is the highest; in fact, even with a 6000-run cut-off, no opener has an average of more than 42 - Gary Kirsten's 41.80 is the second-best. Apart from the high average and strike rate, the other stat that stands out for Tendulkar is his conversion rate of fifties into hundreds: he has 45 centuries and 75 half-centuries, a fifties to hundreds ratio of 1.67. Among openers with at least 6000 runs, the only ones with comparable ratios were Herschelle Gibbs (18 centuries and 24 fifties, ratio 1.33) and Saeed Anwar (20 hundreds and 37 fifties, ratio 1.85). All the others had ratios of more than two, with some of the top names (Haynes, Ganguly, Gilchrist) scoring three fifties per century. Thus, while it's true that Tendulkar was given the opportunity to make big scores thanks to his batting position, he also utilised that much better than most other openers.

Openers with more than 8000 runs in ODIs

Batsman	Innings	Runs	Average	Strike rate	100s/ 50s
Sachin Tendulkar	340	15,310	48.29	88.05	45/ 75
Sanath Jayasuriya	383	12,740	34.61	92.48	28/ 66
Adam Gilchrist	259	9200	36.50	98.02	16/ 53
Sourav Ganguly	236	9146	41.57	73.59	19/ 58
Desmond Haynes	237	8648	41.37	63.09	17/ 57
Chris Gayle	217	8184	40.71	84.83	20/ 44
Saeed Anwar	220	8156	39.98	79.93	20/ 37